Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Snaake]

I just fought off the first seige. Three casualties, mostly fresh migrant recruits.

I have been running leather/shield, and have two 5 man archer squads at this point, and around ~30 wrestlers. The battle mostly consisted of the dwarves bashing things with shields (a couple were featherwood, ugh) and getting peppered by the bolts. 

This is not what I was going for. I am hesitant to strip the melee dwarves of their shields, however.

None of my original 7 have advanced beyond proficient kicker. Most recruits are around novice or adequate after a year of training. (4 months on, 2 months off.)

I dug down to the magma sea, looking for adamantium. The spire is not much use. Maybe I can find another (hope). When the dwarven caravan comes back, I'll buy all the steel they have and melt it down to start making steel shields. I don't know though. As near as I can tell, there is a direct correlation between shield bash and weight, and whereas a shield' defense is inversely related to its weight.

Maybe I'll find silver.

You can't make silver shields by default though, can you? Only moods. Shields can be made from wood, leather, and weapons-grade metals afaik. Also, last I heard, all shields are the same for defense (hence wood is just fine if you don't care about bashing, and adamantium is only better by being lighter). You're right about heavier shields being better for bashing, though. So copper is indeed ideal: the heaviest normally-usable material (without being too heavy) and in plentiful supply (by goblinite if not otherwise, or cheapest).

[krenshala]

Give the recruits a nice, well engraved location to spar in and you won't need to give them more off time than they take on their own.  You know, have your engraver smooth and engrave the room for practice, put that artifact armor stand in the corner, based the barrack on the no quality pine chest encrusted with cabochon mudstone, that kind of thing.

[edgefigaro]

Alright, I'm getting copper sheilds. Now, questions.

A number of dwarves have become attached to their shields. If I redo my uniforms so they carry copper shields instead, will they drop their attached shields to obey my orders and become sad? Can I put a copper shield in addition to and before an "individual choice" shield so their primary shield is a copper shield and they have a secondary shield?

[laularukyrumo]

Shields can be made from wood, leather, and weapons-grade metals.

Silver is weapons-grade. It's shit for edged weapons, but it is, in fact, weapons-grade. I'm pretty sure, at least. You can make silver maces, silver hammers, silver swords, silver crossbow bolts... why not silver shields?

[Porpoisepower]

Let us know if you get any named shields... I've got one, and it's own a legendary Mace dwarf almost killed a goblin with a shield bash....  Shields with kill lists are bad ass!

[Sutremaine]

Soldiers who are attached to equipment don't feel anything when they drop it, and you can get them to drop it by making it an invalid item for their uniform. Specifying copper shields when none of them are holding copper shields that they're attached to will work.

You can make silver maces, silver hammers, silver swords, silver crossbow bolts... why not silver shields?

Toady didn't give silver the appropriate tags. *shrug* Easy enough to fix, if you're so inclined.

[edgefigaro]

I beat off a 4 squad seige with ~10 losses. The fort was in tantrum spiral when my computer crashed, and I lost most of a year of playing.

I wasn't really happy with the way it was turning out.  A few dwarves scrounged up some kicking kills, but I was seeing more shield bash kills, even with wood. Added to that was the fact that kicking was barely leveling up at all.

[enolate]

Obviously, the problem is those pesky arms. For some reason, dwarves are humeral supremacists. They need to be forcefed the glory of the foot. If there is some way to break hands before they spar, so that they'll HAVE to kick. Would traps do it? Infect the arms and have the doctors cut them off?

Ahh, I got it! What you do is give the dwarves metal armor, but don't give them weapons or gauntlets. Put them in two man squads. According to an earlier post, they will spar with wrestling moods and break wrists. BUT if they are tough enough, they won't go to the hospital. Instead, they'll continue to spar and they then will train kicking which is what you want. Then if the wrist wounds heal, they'll wrestle again, break them and repeat the cycle. They might stand around until they get miserable, but the tantruming should also level kicking, right? "Starting a footfight"

[Thuellai]

I beat off a 4 squad seige with ~10 losses. The fort was in tantrum spiral when my computer crashed, and I lost most of a year of playing.

I wasn't really happy with the way it was turning out.  A few dwarves scrounged up some kicking kills, but I was seeing more shield bash kills, even with wood. Added to that was the fact that kicking was barely leveling up at all.

Did you try the attack priority edit?

I'm interested in watching an army of taekwondwarves develop

[edgefigaro]

Yeah, after I changed kicking to primary priority I was getting significantly more kicks. The problem was kicking doesn't like to level. Most of the starting seven spent the better part of three years in the military, training and killing wandering goblins/kobolds. When they weren't training, they were operating pumps. They all started at proficient kicker, and not a single dwarf ever progressed to the next level.

I did see a few awesome kicks, where a dwarf shatters a leg bone or explodes a lung, and a couple of skull smashing kills.

I was going to ride out the tantrum spiral when the compy crashed, and then I threw in the towel. The fort had ~7 candy spires and I was going to start making candy armor suits.  I had just started extracting metal strands.  I was also going to put half of my soldiers in double copper shields and the other half in no shields.

For the entrance I was going to make an "Enter the Dragon" checkerboard of glass walls so archers couldn't shoot.

Lessons learned: If making a dojo, get candy armor as fast as possible.

[Trollhammaren]

When you wield something, doesn't that become your main attack automatically? So you would think wielding shields would keep dwarves from kicking.

[enolate]

When you wield something, doesn't that become your main attack automatically? So you would think wielding shields would keep dwarves from kicking.

Do shields count as wielding. Wrestlers with shield don't spend all their time shield bashing, at least I don't think they do. Is there a way to see in the raws how much exp sparring with a kick gives, compared to a hand?

[Trollhammaren]

You would think having shields in both your shield hand and weapon hand counts as wielding, but who knows. In adventure mode, however, if you pick up any item in your hand, you will usually use that for bashing a lot. I don't know if shields have an exception to that.
edit: and in fortress mode of course, remember bcs preferring smashing people's skulls with socks they randomly ripped off someone's feet rather than non-sock attacks...

[edgefigaro]

Nah, dwarves can equip all sorts of weapons (and armor, but thats a bit different) all at once. It isn't limited to one item per hand or anything.

[Sutremaine]

1. Dwarves who are holding shields will use them for bashing, in the same way that they'd use a weapon for attacking.

2. Dwarves who are in need of diagnosis will not spar.